This is the end of the preview.
Sign up
to access the rest of the document.

Unformatted text preview: The Birth of Scientific English World science is dominated today by a
small number of languages, including
Japanese, German and French, but it is
English which is probably the most popular
global language of science. This is not fast
because of the importance of English-
speaking countries such as the USA in
scientiﬁc research; the scientists of many
non-English-speaking countries find that
they need to write their research papers in
English to reach a wide international
audience. Given the prominence of
scientiﬁc English today, it may seem
surprising that no one real knew how to
write science in English be re the 17th century. Before that, Latin was
regarded as the Hague Franca' For
European intellectuals. The European Renaissance (c. idih—i 6th
century] is sometimes called the 'revival of
learning’, a time of renewed interest in the
'lost knowledge' of classical times. At the
some time, however, scholars also began
to test and extend this knowledge. The
emergent nation states of Europe
developed competitive interests in world
exploration and the development of trade.
Such ex nsion, which was to take the
English anguage west to America and east
to India, was supported by scientific
developments such as the discovery oi
magnetism (and hence the invention of the
compass}, improvements in cartography
and - perhaps the most important scientiﬁc revolution of them all — the new theories of
astronomy and the movement at the Earth in relation to the planets and stars,
deve|0ped by Copernicus (1473—1543]. England was one of the first countries
where scientists adopted and publicised
Copernican ideas with enthusiasm. Some
of these scholars, including two with
interests in language —Jahn Wallis and
John Wilkins — helped Found the Royal
Society in i660 in order to promote
empirical scientific research. Across Europe similar academics and
societies arose, creating new national
traditions of science. in the initial stages of
the scientific revolution, most publications in
the national languages were popular
works, encyclopaedias, educational
textbooks and translations. Original science
was not done in English until the second
half of the l7th century. For example,
Newton blished his mathematical
treatise, frilown as the Principle, in Latin,
but published his later work on the
properties of light — Opticlrs — in English- There Were several reasons why original
science continued to be written in Latin.
The first was simply a matter of audience.
Latin was suitable for an international
audience oi scholars, whereas English
reached a socially wider, but more local,
audience. Hence, popular science was
written in English. ' tongue frame: a [onstage which is used forcammunication between groups of people who sneak (litter-cm languages A second reason for Writing in Latin'may,
perversely, hoVe been a concern for
secrecy. Open publication had dangers in
putting into the public domain preliminary
ideas which had not yet been fully
exploited by their ‘authar'. This growing
concern about intellectual proper rights
was a Feature of the period — it re lected
both the humanist notion of the individual,
rational scientist who invents and discovers
through private intellectual labour, and the
growing connection between original
science and commercial exploitation. There
was something of a social distinction
between 'scholars and gentlemen' who
understood Latin, and men of trade who
lacked a classical education. And in the
mid-17th century it was common practice
tor mathematicians to keep their
discoveries and proofs secret, by writing
them in cipher, in obscure languages, or in
private messages deposited in a sealed x with the Royal Socie . Some scientists
might have felt more com ortable with Latin
precisely because its audience, though
intemational, was socially restricted.
Doctors clung the most keenly to Latin as
an 'insider language'. A third reason why the writing of original
science in English was delayed may have
been to do with the linguistic inadequacy
of English in the early modern period.
English was not well equipped to deal with
scientific argument. First, it lacked the
necessary technical vocabulary. Second, it
locked the grammatical resources required
to represent the world in an obiective and
impersonal way, and to discuss the
relations, such as cause and effect, that
might hold between complex and
hypothetical entities. Fortunately, several members of the Royal
Society possessed an interest in language
and become engaged in various linguistic
projects- Although a proposal in 1664 to
establish a committee for improving the
English language come to little, the
society's members did a great deal to
foster the publication at science in English
and to encourage the development of a
suitable writing style. Man members of
the Royal Society also pub ished
monographs in English. One ofthe first
was by Robert Hooke, the society's first
curator of experiments, who described his
experiments with microscopes in
Micrographia (1665}. This work is largely
narrative in style, based on a transcript of
oral demonstrations and lectures. In 1:565 a new scientific iournal,
Philosophical Transactions, was
inaugurated. Perhaps the first international
English-language scientiﬁc iournal, it
encouraged a new genre of scientific
writing, that of short, focused accounts of
particular experiments- The 17th century was thus a formative
period in the establishment of scientific
English. In the following century mach of
this momentum was last as German
established itself as the leading European
language of science. It is estimated that by
the end of the 13th Century 1101 German
scientific ioumals had been established as
opposed to 96 in France and 50 in
England. However, in the 19th century
scientific English again enioyed substantial
lexical growth as the industrial revolution
created the need for new technical
vocabulary, and new, specialised,
professional societies were instituted to
promote and publish in the new disciplines. ...
View
Full Document

What students are saying

As a current student on this bumpy collegiate pathway, I stumbled upon Course Hero, where I can find study resources for nearly all my courses, get online help from tutors 24/7, and even share my old projects, papers, and lecture notes with other students.

Kiran
Temple University Fox School of Business ‘17, Course Hero Intern

I cannot even describe how much Course Hero helped me this summer. It’s truly become something I can always rely on and help me. In the end, I was not only able to survive summer classes, but I was able to thrive thanks to Course Hero.

Dana
University of Pennsylvania ‘17, Course Hero Intern

The ability to access any university’s resources through Course Hero proved invaluable in my case. I was behind on Tulane coursework and actually used UCLA’s materials to help me move forward and get everything together on time.